While planning this trip, tracing
my finger along the route I wanted to follow, I was
always irritated by the chunk of Germany dividing Holland
from Denmark. What was a country like Germany doing
separating these two supremely civilized nations?
Eventually, I accepted that there was no getting around
it, and that wed have to deal with it when we got
there.

Of course I never
anticipated pedaling through the remnant of the Third
Reich on my own, so it was with special sense of dread
that I woke up this morning in my tent, at five-thirty
a.m. I lay in my knotted sleeping bag for a while,
listening to the ducks splash noisily in the lake and
waiting for human sounds to signal that it was okay to
get up and move around. None came, though, so I started
cleaning my chain at around seven, trying to be as silent
as possible. There was still no one stirring as I packed
my bags, folded up my tent, and headed out of town under
the menacing sky. The Dutch apparently like to sleep
late.

Bourtanges was only twenty
kilometers away, but it felt a lot longer without any
coffee in my belly, fighting a headwind and cursing the
drizzle. Still, I was struck again by how beautiful
Holland is, and what a great achievement that is for such
a flat place: why couldnt they have done this with
Illinois? As I mused upon this question, a familiar smell
enveloped me. In my pre-caffeinated state it took me a
while to realize that I was surrounded by fields of
marijuana (or at least hemp) plants. I was half-tempted
to harvest one for myself, but wasnt so sure that
the Germans would take kindly to my arriving in their
Fatherland with a big pot plant bungeed to my rear rack.

My bike was making a funny
sound so I stopped in the first town called
Sellingenwhere a guy in wooden shoes sold me a
spoke wrench. Another similarly shod dude sold me a
banana. Wooden shoes were everywhere. It soon became
apparent that Sellingen is a wooden shoe center (perhaps
because of its proximity to the German border: last
chance for tourists to buy a pair), with homemade models
on display in front of many of the village houses.

I got a little lost on the
way to Bourtanges, another star-shaped fortress of a town
--actually a lot more fortress than town. No fewer than
three concentric walls, separated by moats. Ive
never seen such a well-defended place. As I rode over the
second drawbridge into the village, I wondered what there
ever was to defend here. The whole village occupied less
than a hectare, and consisted of a central square acting
as a hub for the six or eight street-spokes, each only
one block long, that lead to the innermost set of walls.
I spent the last of my guilders here on a cup of coffee
and a miserable excuse for a sandwich: a slice of
velveeta-esque cheese on a Wonder hamburger bun. In my
experience, Dutch cuisine ranks among the worlds
worst. But of course I havent been to Lithuania
yet Munching on my meager repast and staring off
into the drizzle, I realized with irony that I was going
to miss Holland a lot.

I crossed the German
border on a deserted road, and one of the first things I
saw was a sign indicating the speed limit for tanks
rather disquieting right at the Dutch border, I
thought. I was pleased to see, however, that there was a
bike path. It wasnt nearly as well-maintained as
the ones in Holland, though, and certainly not as used.
It seems like everyone here has traded in his or her
three-speed for a shiny new Mercedes.

Outside of the
character-free town of Dorpen, I got a little lost again
before hooking up with the Kustenkanal, which I followed
for 70 mind-numbingly dull kilometers. The road was
indicated as scenic on my Michelin map. I guess those
wacky tire makers in Clermont-Ferrand find truck traffic
scenic. At least there was a bike pathalbeit a very
bumpy one-- affording occasional glimpses of the
industrial-looking canal through the underbrush. For
many, many miles, I didnt pass through a single
village or see a single fellow cyclist. Pedaling against
the wind in such flat and dull surroundings quickly took
on a purgatorial aspect, so I leapt at the first chance
to take an alternate route, a smaller road on the other
side of the canal. This road was much prettier, like a
tunnel through a canopy of trees, and passed through
ersatz villages with strange names, like Harben I and
Jeddeloh II. "What kind of straight person named
these places?" I wondered, "A disgruntled
Deutches Telekom employee?" My question was soon
answered by a rock which commemorated Harben Is 50th
anniversary, in 1985. Hitler! Of course!

From here on, I was
reminded as I always am in Germany of the "Fawlty
Towers" episode where John Cleese instructs his
hotel employees how to welcome German guests.
"Whatever you do, dont mention the War,"
he tells them, only to begin goose-stepping himself once
the Germans arrive. Its impossible not to think of
the war, since evidence of it is everywhere here: towns
which were obviously flattened and hastily rebuilt; the
countryside dotted with bunkers; a near total absence of
men over sixty. Whenever I see an older person in the
street in this strange country almost invariably a
womanI cant help but think that she voted for
Hitler as her leader, her fuhrer. . I guess Ive
seen too many war movies filled with anti-Nazi
propaganda. As hard as I try, I cant get thoughts
of the war out of my mind in my dealings with Germans,
which makes it impossible for me to relax or even feel at
ease here.

I had ridden well over a
hundred kilometers by the time I reached Oldenburg, and
it seemed a pleasant enough place to spend the night,
full of cyclists and sidewalk cafes. But as Im
expected in Copenhagen on Saturday night, I hopped on a
train to Hamburg after a late lunch (at 4:30) of
bratwurst and beer. Unfortunately, I had to change trains
(and platforms) in Bremen, meaning schlepping my
fully-loaded monster bike up and down stairs. The first
train looked and felt like a rolling hospital waiting
room. A young, zaftig conductor mercifully helped me get
my bike into the luggage compartment and sold me a
ticket. It wasnt until he turned around to serve
the next passenger that I noticed the shape of a bat
shaved into his hair. I conversed briefly with a young,
cute Pakistani on his way to Hamburg for business. I told
him we might be pedaling through his country next year,
and he responded, "Yes, but why a bicycle?" He
gave me his e-mail address and stared at me with frank
and discomfiting desire. When it was time to get off the
train, he couldnt help me with my bike, since all
his energy was devoted to a feeble attempt at concealing
his uh tumescence.

The train to Hamburg was
miles long and of course I had to rush all the way to the
other end of it for the luggage car. Again, the staff
were helpful and friendly and I wondered if I should be
visiting Germany by train rather than by bike. It was hot
and I was sweating from all the effort, so I sought out a
compartment with an open window. When I found one it
contained two friendly German businessmen. Jack lives in
Izmir, Turkey, and owns a dried fruit operation, while
his agent, Wolfgang, lives in Hamburg. In order to
converse with me, Jack closed the window, causing me
nearly to suffocate. I gave praise to Jesus that it was a
fast train; in no time at all, we were in Hamburg, where
Wolfgangs beautiful 20-something Ameriphilic son
met us at the platform. He expressed his regret at not
having the time to show me around the city, and I
expressed it right back.

I was beat from all the
heat and all the traveling, and made the mistake of
choosing a hotel blindly from the Spartacus Guide.
"Haralds Hotel and Bar" leapt out at me
from the page With such an excellent name, how could I go
wrong? Indeed, after a short pedal across the great
blandness of central Hamburg, I found myself in a
comfortable room overlooking a garden and was assisted
with my luggage by an adorable creature called Adam. My
impression was not to last, however. After a necessary
shower and change, I went down to the bar for a beer. The
place was full of amazingly cute boys, whom I soon
learned to be whores. Many of them flirted with me,
causing in me a crise de viellesse. Could I
possibly look old enough to be a potential client? I
quickly downed my beer and went outside to have a walk
around. Reeperbahn, I soon learned, is a huge
German-style (read: antiseptic) red light district. All
up and down the street, I was assaulted by the
come-ons of touts in front of "cabaret"
shows and whores (of the female variety, that is) of all
shapes and sizes. One block was so full of working girls
that walking down it was like running the Gauntlet. I
soon learned to stay on the other side of the street. All
the sordid tat spilled into the side streets of the
Reeperbahn as well. One street called "Grosse
Freiheit Strasse" which I think means
something like "big freedom
street"resembled uncannily the infamous
Patpong in Bangkok. The same neon, the same touts, the
same swillers of beer. I peeked into a number of bars but
didnt dare go into any of them. Inside were drunken
sailors, elderly whores and derelicts of every sort.
After gobbling down a nasty dinner, I beat a hasty
retreat to my room. To me, Hamburg looked like a giant
Fassbinder film come to life, and I didnt feel
quite equipped to deal with it yet.

11 July,
Hamburg/Neumunster to Grossenbrode, 126km

When I was little I found it
humorous that there existed somewhere a whole city full
of people who called themselves hamburgers. And I suppose
I still do (the "Gute Fahrt" signs one sees on
the way out of villages also remain a source of puerile
amusement for me). Yesterday I spent a whole day among
the Hamburgers, a day which marked for me the arrival of
summer. It was warm and gloriously sunny for the first
time in what felt like months. The road beckoned, but I
spent the day trapped and baking in travel agencies and
telephone booths, trying to arrange travel from
Copenhagen to Milwaukee for my grandmothers
memorial service next week. I walked from place to place
in order to make sense of this immense town. It felt
efficient and flavorless (two adjectives which have
always summed up the whole of Germany for me; for many
years I have maintained that Germany is "the Ohio of
Europe", and I remain steadfast). There were only a
few old buildings, hemmed in by busy roadways and
office/apartment blocks designs by graduates of the
Legoland school of architecture. Looking down almost any
street, it loomed there in the distance: the
radiotelekommunication-tower-mit-der-revolvingrestaurantamdertopp.
Every large German town seems to have at least one. The
center was full of expensive shops and people carrying
shopping bags, the overall impression being that of
mercantilism gone awry (I suppose that the Reeperbahn is
just another side to this phenomenon). On the advice of
several different people, I also took a stroll along the
lake in the center of town, which is precisely inverse to
Ter Apels lake back in Holland. It has an organic
shape to it on the map, but is in reality almost
perfectly square, in order to fit into das
HamburgerMasterPlann. I also took a look at the
much-touted harborside, which is almost monumentally
ugly. It goes on forever and consists of a monotonous
series of floating docks that are really just two-level
barges. Walking along them, with the docks listing one
way and the boats the other, I got a hint of what it
feels like to be seasick for the first time in my life.

In the evening I went out
once again in search of a decent watering hole, figuring
that a city as enormous as Hamburg must have at least
one. When I asked the boys in my hotels bar where
one could find a bar that didnt also act as a
supermarket, I was met with blank stares. I actually
ended up finding two, though neither could hold a candle
to the queer bars of, say, El Paso. At a place called
Rudys I spoke or rather listenedat
length to a 67-year old Swiss opera singer named Franz.
He was verbose yet fascinating, full of stories of an
on-and-off boyfriend of yore from Laredo, Texas, a
fabulous green dressing gown from Mexico City that made
its debut on an Atlantic crossing aboard the France, and
a libidnous stage director in Aix-en-Provence. His
delivery was theatrical to a fault, and as engaging as
his tales were, I felt a bit uncomfortable being cast in
the role of the audience. Later, I went to a potentially
excellent dive called "Wunderbar", where my
attention was attracted to an intriguing-looking girl
sporting a no-nonsense blond hairdo and pointy
horn-rimmed glasses. She was the only girl in the place
and obviously alone,. To strike up a conversation, I used
the wrong approach, asking her what such a gorgeous
creature was doing in such a dump. She apparently
didnt catch my intended ironic tone, and answered
in a very serious monotone: "Ids a homosegsual
bar and I am homosegsual." Uta as I learned
she was called-- went on to tell me how she had just
moved to Hamburg from Stuttgart for her job and how she
felt a bit lonely in her new surroundings. We compared
extensive notes on our common state of solitude, and we
seemed to be talking on precisely the same wavelength.
But maybe it was just the beer.

I didnt leave
Hamburg today until past one this afternoon. The
amazingly patient Fraulein Schmidt, from one of the
travel agencies I had been dealing with, came through
with a ticket that didnt cost the equivalent of
Zambias GNP. Only problem was that her computers
were down all morning. And to further complicate things
(my theory is that Germans like things to be
complicated), I had to pay for it in cash, which meant a
wild goose chase through the banks of Hamburg attired in
already sweaty cycling gear.

I took train to get out of
town, all the way to the little town of Neumunster.
Riding in the baggage car with me was a Dutch boy named
Nick, who was also riding his bike from Holland to
Denmark. It was his first extensive bicycle trip and he
was cheating too, wanting to get to the relative
civilization and coziness of Denmark a.s.a.p. He
complained unabashedly about the state of the German bike
paths, the high costs of everything, and the
unfriendliness of the people. He changed trains in
Neumunster to get closer to the border, but if his ride
this afternoon was anything like mine, he may very well
have changed his mind about Germany, since the riding was
nothing short of sublime.

I rode through a landscape
of rolling hills carpeted with waving fields of wheat and
corn, liberally sprinkeld with rippling blue lakes and
lush forests. Had the train somehow transported me to
Wisconsin? I caught myself longing to linger in this
enchanted area for a few extra days and fantasized about
doing it with Fred. Every now a Gunther or a Greta would
come screaming around a corner in a BMW, disrupting the
splendor of it all, but most of the day was perfect
cycling bliss. The road between the tiny village of
Langenhangen and Oldenburg Im Holstein (which explained
the presence of so many black and white cows) was
particularly splendiforous. It was the golden time of
day, where the light makes everything look beautiful, and
the narrow road plunged through meadows and glades
towards the glistening sea in the distance.

Further on, I endured a
minor catastrophe. I had meant to get as close as
possible to the ferry for Denmark, which leaves from
Puttgarden on the island of Fehmarn, but the road running
alongside the highway came to an abrupt end under the
bridge. There was a long and steep staircase, halfway up
which I pushed my bike, using all the strength I had.
When I investigated the steeper and narrower part
remaining, I realized it meant crossing over train tracks
and two sets of guardrails. I went back to join my bike
feeling helpless, and the thundering noise of a train
passing overhead made it clear that Id have to turn
back. This meant unloading my bike completely and making
several trips up and down. Exhausted and famished, I
wanted to cry. I had intended to check into a youth
hostel marked on my map on the other side of the bridge,
thus marking another bikebrats first. But it was getting
dark and I had to backtrack all the way to Grossenbrode;
Id have to spend the night there. I ran into a
vanfull of Chinese people frantically looking for the
campground, and figured I followed them. But the place
was a zoo, swarming with people. It looked like
Woodstock. After employing my rusty Chinese to help them
get their site lined up, I filled out the paperwork for a
site of my own before having a princess attack. There was
going to be a party at the nearby beach, the campground
manager told me, and I could get food there. I imagined
myself staying up late again, sleeping on the hard
ground, being awakened by loud and drunken German
partygoers and walking two hundred meters every time I
needed to pee. Crumpling up the form I had just filled
out, I asked the manager where I could find the nearest
hotel. After all the trials I had been through today and
functioning on piteously little sleep, I figured the
least I deserved was a decent nights sleep.